Northern Ireland Executive Formation

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is good that we will have bodies like InterTrade UK and an east-west council. These are positive developments, as are the new needs-based budget provisions and the new model. I commend and congratulate all those who have been involved in the talks, who have approached it in good faith and with integrity.

However, will the noble Lord accept—noble Lords in this House need to realise this—that there are still many unionists who are deeply worried and concerned about the Irish Sea border? We must drill down into the details of this deal. The Irish Sea border still exists because many British goods coming from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, especially in manufacturing, still need to go through full EU compliance checks and procedures? While we have the new green lane— renamed—which is mainly for retail, the default position is as I have described for everything else that does not have an end point for sale in Northern Ireland.

Will the Minister, who knows Northern Ireland very well, confirm the concern among many unionists about the continued sovereignty, jurisdiction and application of EU laws over large swathes of our economy—in 300 areas—to which the Stormont brake does not apply? We cannot make or amend laws in those areas. These are fundamentally important constitutional and economic issues, and many unionists are still concerned about them. Although there are improvements to the operation of the Windsor Framework, which in itself was a tweak to the original protocol, the fundamentals of it remain in place. Can the Minister confirm today what provisions of the framework itself are changed by this deal? Can he lay them out? Will he confirm that the SIs currently being debated in the other place do not come into law until they are passed by this House on 13 February, if they are indeed passed?

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn, for his words, and I welcome his positive remarks about a number of the new bodies, such as InterTrade UK and the new east-west council. He made a number of points on the so-called Irish Sea border that have been made on a number of occasions by members of his party and other political parties in Northern Ireland. I am sorry to say to him that the Government take a very different view as a result of the deal that has been agreed over the past few days, as indeed, I gently point out, does his party leader, who, along with the Government, now accepts that what we have agreed is a firm basis for going back into the institutions and re-establishing the Executive and Assembly at Stormont. We simply do not recognise that what the noble Lord describes is anything like a trade border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. As a result of this deal, the number of goods that will pass into Northern Ireland from Great Britain without checks will be significantly increased.

The noble Lord referred to EU law, and I will repeat what I have said on many previous occasions. By the EU’s own calculation, the amount of EU law that will apply in Northern Ireland is under 3% and is there solely for the purpose of dealing with goods going from Great Britain via Northern Ireland into the single market. We have in place some important and robust new democratic scrutiny structures to prevent new EU laws applying where they are not desirable or appropriate for Northern Ireland. That is all set out in the Command Paper.

On the noble Lord’s final point, as I pointed out in the Statement, that legislation will reaffirm in the clearest possible terms Northern Ireland’s position as an integral part of this United Kingdom. It will guarantee and future-proof the smooth circulation of goods throughout the United Kingdom internal market. As a matter of fact, he is right that those SIs will not become law until they have passed your Lordships’ House.